Table tennis, arcade games, and new seating: inside the efforts to upgrade Houston Hall

After students voiced complaints that Houston Hall was not a student union and instead essentially functioned as an event space, Penn administrators and student government made plans to renovate the hall to serve its primary role as a hub for student life.

The changes, which began last semester, are slated to be ongoing throughout the school year. The new renovations include new arcade games, ping pong tables, a foosball table, new seats, and more new artwork on the walls. Administrators hope to bring in new furniture, such as beanbags, this school year and create gender-neutral bathrooms next summer, said Vice Provost for University Life Associate Director Laurie Hall. 

Administrators and students began working on the new renovations last November, when two Undergraduate Assembly members, now Wharton and Engineering senior Nick Parkes and College senior Arjun Swaminathan, brought up that students don't consider Houston Hall a student center. 

"Students had lost sight of the fact that Houston Hall was the nation's first student union and is supposed to be our student union," UA President and College senior Natasha Menon said. "And so I think a lot of us felt like it didn't necessarily reflect what we look like now as a university."

"There's always some people working somewhere on laptops, doing homework. And then there's this culture of you're sitting there seeing all these other people doing work, and you feel pressure to always be stressed always be working," Parkes said. "So that was kind of the whole idea behind renovating Houston, since the entire purpose of the building is to be a student union and a place people go to get away from all the stress of classes."

Hall, who worked with the UA on the new renovations, said that when she first took a walk through Houston Hall, she thought the building looked "library-like."

Hall came to Penn in 2017 and had previously started Princeton University's student union. She said for a time, Houston Hall and the Perelman Quadrangle were tasked primarily with generating revenue from being spaces for events, so that was why the space could not look more student-centered. Almost all of the existing portraits in Houston Hall depict the 1896 period when Houston Hall was founded.

"But now the goal has changed, and it's to marry the revenue targets with also having Houston Hall serve as a student center," Hall said.

"Students who are here now are just as much a part of Penn's history as students who were here in 1896," she added. 

VPUL hired an outside consultant that had previously designed Princeton's student center, Menon said. The consultant provided blueprints of what Houston Hall would look like and the UA was involved in the final approval of these plans. 

"We made sure that there was one very specific stipulation, which is that there should be no tables, no place where you can sit down and do work. We just wanted to be kind of a no work, only play space," Parkes said. Although tables still ended up being placed in the game room, the goal of making it more of a recreational space has seemed to work out, Parkes added. 

Menon said the renovation project is not without its difficulties because of Houston Hall's old age.

"So that's why most of the wall coverings or vinyl decals can be easily removed without harming the walls behind it. A lot of the newer posters or signage are leaning up against the wall instead of being tacked against the wall, so that way it doesn't harm the walls either," Menon said.

The UA is now looking into ways to get feedback from the student body about ways to make Houston Hall more of a student union, Swaminathan said.

"We are definitely looking into gaining further ideas and getting more feedback on ways to improve it. We really want to make sure it's a place where students can have a great time and really feel like they're part of a broader community," Swaminathan said.

Parkes said the work to improve Houston Hall is part of the mental health discussion on campus. 

"This has always been a big draw, especially on the UA, in terms of making sure that everybody's staying mentally healthy," Parkes said. "We thought this was a good way to make some sort of tangible change there."